I just saw a commercial for whale meat on Japanese TV. Holy crap, I'm pretty pissed off.

I keep trying to tell myself, its ok, its for "research". I fail to see how eating whales is research.

Would you rather they just kill them and throw it all away later? I know the reasearch bit is probably bullshit, but if part of the whale is researched and the rest is eaten I dont see a problem with it. If the whole thing is eaten and no research is done either, I still have no problem with it, people eat anything and everything.

I remember seeing the wax displays of whale bacon in front of resturants in Osaka and regret not giving it a try, oh well maybe next time. I was more surprised to see that they serve horse meat than whale meat actually. Horse raw with just a little bit of garlic, not as bad as I would have thought.

Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate, but I'm curious what bothers you about the fact that this is Whale Meat? What makes it different from ads for steaks or bacon?

I should say that I'm asking this as a lifelong vegetarian. I always find it interesting when people eat some meat, but find offense with others, since I've always felt like "animals are animals" and "Meat is meat".

What makes it different that its whales?

"meat is meat" has to be one of my favorite slogans.

maybe because they are an endangered specie, not like horse, sheep, or whatever animal we are breeding...

Silly Japanese and their non poisoned foods. Why can't they be more like us?

TOKYO (AP) -- A Kansas meat packer that fought U.S. authorities to test its entire herd for mad cow disease was hit with a suspension by Japan this week for shipping banned animal parts.

The decision came after Japanese inspectors Tuesday found bovine spinal columns - prohibited under a bilateral trade agreement - in two of 810 boxes sent by Creekstone Farms Premium Beef.

The USDA tests about 1 percent of cows for the potentially deadly disease.

My understanding is that the particular whale they are hunting is plentiful.
But I could be mistaken. I in no way condone the killing but then again I couldn't kill a cow either. Yet I still eat beef.
There are allot of issues that I can understand your distaste for the subject. Killing an animal for meat which is thought to have a high intelligence could be one.
Is it endangered? would be the questionable one for me considering it seems very contradictory to Japan. A country that seems to stand strong on environmental issues but yet kills whales is hard to grasp.


Would I try Whale Bacon if given to me? Probably.

I don't really understand the science behind blasting whales with penthrite grenade-tipped harpoons.

"According to the International Whaling Commission, it can take up to 14 minutes for a whale that has had a grenade explode inside its body to die."



"Japan announced last year that its whaling fleet would kill up to 50 endangered humpback whales and 50 fin whales, along with the 935 minke whales that it would catch within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary around Antarctica this season. Tokyo does not recognise the sanctuary."



I don't think I would. It seems that whale meat may contain high levels of mercury.

Here are a couple of interesting articles I found on Japanese whaling:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article722308.ece

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-whale-hunt-that-knows-no-tradition/2007/12/23/1198344878587.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Well that just plain sucks.

A lot of this boils down to perspective. Norway, Japan, Canada along with other countries actively hunt whales and there a lot of uses for the whale meat and biproducts. Now..not everyone who lives in those countries, naturally agrees with it...but then again not everyone probably understands why we kill cows or chickens or intelligent pigs...inhumanely.

As far as the "endangered" species...I'm on the fence with that argument. I find it hard to believe that intelligent nations would go out of their way to kill a species to extinction especially when it's so valuable to them.

Endangered or not its cruel. If you don't mind being cruel to get a feed well how do you argue with that.

Animals hate us. It's them or us ...

Do you think it's any coincidence that since the advent of the IWC
stocks of both Cod in the Atlantic and Tuna in the Pacific have plummeted?
(Although one recent study concluded that up to half an adult whale's diet
may consist of empty plastic drinking bottles.)

Hippies will say that Whales are intelligent, based mainly on the fact that they "sing".
It's not singing.
They're complaining - about the temperature of the water, about it's salinity ...
and about US!

Every year there are numerous failed attacks on boats
and attempted invasions of our coasts by these stupid creatures.
Here, a frightened woman & her child are surrounded by one such marauding band:



I am more worried by the threat from land-based animals myself.
This kangaroo's attack is premeditated and completely unprovoked:


There are threat's from other sea animals as well though.
A fun day out at the zoo turned to tragedy recently for this Tokyo family:


What happens next is both shocking and unbelievable.
If you can stomach it, the video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jamJ4-C_TME

The whale became endangered when the White man hunted it for lamp oil during the 18-19th Centuries right? Why should the Japanese have to sacrifice because of someone else irresponsible hunting practices ? It is kinda like Al Gore telling me to turn my A/C up when his 10,000 sq. ft. mansion is sitting at 78`. Or telling the Indians you can't hunt Buffalo anymore b/c we shot most of them for target practice. I'm not saying it is right, endangered is endangered I suppose, but...how much U.S. Empire Poison and Sludge is toxifying the oceans and killing the whales anyhow??

have ya'll seen the "plastic" continent in the S. Pacific? Twice the size of Texas. I bet you 90% of it is from American based multinational corporations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLrVCI4N67M

Alice that video was disgusting. I cannot eat today. Thanks. Animals are getting their revenge. It is called Swine Flu.

my understanding of intelligent nations is that they are more worried of the present than the future...and if they consider that killing whales can be financially interesting now, I don't think they will consider the future consequence of killing them

A lot of questions brought up were answered already.

Why am I upset by this and not other animals? was asked??

I am strict VEGAN and have been for 7 years. I went vegetarian 10 years ago; so I'm not a "lifelong" vegetarian, but I do care about animals.

It was brought up...the severity of WHALES in particular is that they are Endangered and the hunting is done in internationally recognized sanctuaries.

The sad fact about the Japanese catching whales is the smokescreen of "research", as they call it, is just an excuse to catch whales. The problem is, that hardly any Japanese actually eat whale meat any more. It's more done out of tradition(and jobs), and believe me, they throw a lot of it away. The younger Japanese generations don't go near the stuff.
So they're kinda catching them to keep the whale fishermen in jobs, as not many people sit down to a big juicy whale steak anymore.

"WHALES ARE CUNTS"
(Peter Cook, 1937-1995)

Yup, this is something that definitely needs to done away with. Its a ridiculous attempt at keeping face in the global community (which is really ironic since most countries would respect Japan more if they just stepped down on this) and keeping an entire industry on welfare. Whale meat is not really profitable or in demand anymore, and even in the past was considered such a low-grade meat it was commonly used in school lunches. If you ask me, at the very least they've got to cut the operations back to what the actual demand for the meat is (probably about half or less of what they're pulling in now) because its ridiculous to be killing endangered animals for what amounts to a giant make-work project.